Mailpiece creation systems such as mailpiece inserters are typically used by organizations such as banks, insurance companies, and utility companies to periodically produce a large volume of mailpieces, e.g., monthly billing or shareholders income/dividend statements. In many respects, mailpiece inserters are analogous to automated assembly equipment inasmuch as sheets, inserts and envelopes are conveyed along a feed path and assembled in or at various modules of the mailpiece inserter. That is, the various modules work cooperatively to process the sheets until a finished mailpiece is produced.
A mailpiece inserter includes a variety of apparatus/modules for conveying and processing sheet material along the feed path. Commonly mailpiece inserters include apparatus/modules for (i) feeding and singulating printed content material in a “feeder module”, (ii) accumulating the content material to form a multi-sheet collation in an “accumulator”, (iii) folding the content material to produce a variety of fold configurations such as a C-fold, Z-fold, bi-fold and gate fold, in a “folder”, (iv) feeding mailpiece inserts such as coupons, brochures, and pamphlets, in combination with the content material, in a “chassis module” (v) inserting the folded/unfolded and/or nested content material into an envelope in an “envelope inserter”, (vi) sealing the filled envelope in “sealing module” (vii) printing recipient/return addresses and/or postage indicia on the face of the mailpiece envelope at a “print station” and (viii) controlling the flow and speed of the content material at various locations along the feed path of the mailpiece inserter by a series of “buffer stations”. In addition to these commonly employed apparatus/modules, mailpiece inserter may also include other modules for (i) binding/to close the module to close and seal filled mailpiece envelopes and a (vi) a printing module for addressing and/or printing postage indicia
When producing mailpieces having multiple sheets, mailpiece inserters are commonly limited to producing content material which is “nested” when folded. That is, once multiple sheets of content material are accumulated, the collation is folded as a nested group. While this arrangement efficiently folds multiple sheets, plastic deformation along the fold lines can be difficult, resulting in a collation which adds unnecessary bulk to the mailpiece when loaded into an envelope. To address these concerns, additional folding modules or high capacity compaction rollers may be employed, however, such additional modules or equipment can increase the overall size of the mailpiece inserter. The overall space requirements or “footprint” of the mailpiece inserter is also challenged by the number of processing modules, e.g., buffer stations, needed to accommodate high speed inserters. As more buffer stations are displaced/added/needed, the size of the inserter can be adversely impacted.
A need, therefore, exists for a system and method for processing both nested and unnested content material while maintaining a minimum space envelop.